A generic finger lever of the pre-cited type having lateral guides is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,582. These guides bear against the valve stem of a gas exchange valve and have the function of guiding the finger lever laterally, i.e. they prevent the finger lever from slipping off the valve stem. These lateral guides are formed by a doubling of the side walls, i.e. the side walls merge at their lower ends into parallel, upwardly extending inner side walls that are connected to each other by a bottom wall. In this way, a downwardly facing recess is formed in the finger lever for the valve stem, said recess being defined by the two inner side walls and the bottom wall.
A drawback of this finger lever is that this type of lateral guidance necessitates a complicated shaping procedure and the finger lever has a large mass due to the doubling of the side walls.